by Laird Barron
Into the forest. And gods, the trees were larger than ever there along a shrouded ridge that dropped into a deep gulf of shadows and mist. He was channeled along a trail that proved increasingly treacherous. Water streamed from upslope, digging notches through moss and dirt into the underlying rock. In sections the dirt and vegetation were utterly stripped to exposed plates of slick stone, veined red with alkali and the bloody clay of the earth. The trees were so huge, their lattice of branches so tight, it became dim as a shuttered vault, and chilly enough to see faint vapors of one's breath.
The game trail cut sharply into the hillside and eventually passed through a thick screen of saplings and devil's club and leveled into a marshy clearing. A handful of boulders lay sunken into the moss and muck around the trunks of three squat cottonwood trees. Surprisingly enough, there were odds and ends of human habitation carelessly scattered-rusted stovetops and empty cans, rotted wooden barrels and planed timber, bits of old shattered glass and bent nails. Either the site of a ruined house, long swallowed by the earth, or a dumping ground. The rest of the men gathered at the rim of the hollow nearest a precipitous drop into the valley. Fast moving water rumbled from somewhere below.
Horn lay on his back, his boots propped on the body of the fallen buck. Ma and Calhoun were nowhere in evidence. Miller took it all in for a few moments. He finally shouldered his rifle and had a sip of water from his canteen. "He hurt?" He jerked his thumb at Horn. The boy's coonskin cap had flown off and his long, greasy hair was a bird nest of leaves and twigs. A black and blue lump swelled above his eye.
"Nah, he ain't hurt," Stevens said. "Are ya, kid? He's okay. Got the wind knocked outta him is all. Tripped over a damn root and busted his skull. He'll be right as rain in a minute. Won't ya, kid?"
Horn groaned and covered his eyes with his arm.
"He's affrighted," Bane said, and spat. The grizzled logger clutched his rifle in one hand and a tomahawk in the opposite. His knuckles were white. He kept moving his eyes.
"Afraid of what?" Miller said, surveying the area. He didn't like the feel of the place, its dankness, the malformed cottonwoods, the garbage. He also disliked the fact Calhoun and Ma weren't around.
Stevens and Bane glanced at each other and shrugged. Stevens squatted by Horn and patted his arm almost tenderly. "Wanna slug of this fine awerdenty, kid? Where'd those other boys get to, eh?" He helped Horn get seated upright, then held the jug for him while the kid had pull.
Ruark scowled and ambled to the drop and stared down into the valley. The water thumped and so did Miller's heart. He tilted his head and stared through the opening above the clearing, regarded the brilliant blue-gold sky. Cloudless, immaculate. Already the sun was low against the peaks. Dark came early in the mountains. The sun seemed peculiar-it blurred and flames radiated from its core and its rim blackened like a coal.
Horn coughed and wiped his mouth on his wool sleeve. "Yeh, tripped an' smacked muh noggin'. Weren't no stob, though. No sir. They's a snare yonder. Prolly more where that come from." He pointed and Bane went and examined the spot.
Bane whistled and said, "He ain't blowin' smoke. Step light, boys. We ain't alone."
"Bushwhackers," Ruark said, turning with predatory swiftness to regard his comrade.
"Ain't no bushwhackers." Stevens rose and swiped at the gathering flies with his hat. "We maybe got us a trapper tucked into that park down there.
That's what we got."
"Shit." Bane lifted a piece of thin rope, its long end snaking off through the underbrush. He coiled in the slack and gave it a yank. A bell clanged nearby and Bane threw the rope and jumped back as if scalded. "Shit!"
"Yeh, shit!" Ruark said and stepped away from the ridgeline. He had his Sharps in hand now.
Miller said, "Thad, where's Cal and Ma?"
Horn still appeared confused from the blow to his head, but the grave faces of his companions sobered him a bit. "Din't see on account I was woozy for a spell. Heard 'em jawin' with somebody that come up on us. Cal said to hang on, they'd be right back."
"You act a mite nervous. Something else happen?"
The boy hesitated. "Din't much care for the sound of whoever they was that jawed with Cal an' Ma. Not 'tall. Sounded right wicked."
"The hell does that mean?" Stevens said.
Horn shrugged and pulled on his cap.
"Shitfire!" Bane said, and spat.
"How long ago?" Miller said. He thought of hiding in the trenches during the war, scanning the gloom for signs of the enemy creeping forward. He'd learned, as did most men of violence, to recognize the scent of imminent peril. At that moment the scent was very strong indeed.
"I reckon half an' hour ago. I blacked out for a while. Them shots snapped me outta it."
Before the boy had finished speaking, Bane and Ruark slipped away to the edge of the clearing, cutting for sign. Ruark whistled and everyone but Horn hustled over. Just beyond a deadfall he'd found a well-beaten footpath. Their missing comrades had passed this way, and so had at least two others. Bane swore and cut a plug of chaw and jammed it in his mouth. He swore again, and spat. The four held a brief discussion and decided there might be trouble ahead so caution was advised. Miller would help Horn back to camp while the rest went on to find Calhoun and Ma. Horn got to his feet and joined them, visibly shaking off his unsteadiness. "Like hell. Ma is my boy. I'm goin'."
"Fine," Stevens said. "Moses, you lead the way." And the men proceeded along the path single file. The going was much easier than before as the path lay a few feet from the ridgeline and the hills, while steep, were much
gentler than before.
Ten minutes later they came to a fork at the base of a dead red cedar. The bole of the cedar would've required four or five men to link hands to span its girth. It had sheared off at about the eighty foot mark. One fork of the trail continued along the ridge; the other descended into the valley, which was still mostly hidden by forest. Boot-prints went both directions, but Bane and Ruark were confident there friends had travelled in the valley. Bane sniffed the air, then gestured downward. "Wood smoke."
"Sure enough," Miller said just then winding the tang of smoke. They'd proceeded only a few paces when he happened to look back and stopped with a hiss of warning to his companions.
"What is it?" Stevens said.
"That tree," Miller said, indicating a blaze mark on the downhill face of the big dead cedar-a stylized ring, broken on the sinister side. The symbol was roughly four feet across and gouged in a good three inches. Someone had daubed it in a thick reddish paint, now bled and mostly absorbed by the wood. It appeared petrified with age. Some inherent quality of the ring caused Miller's flesh to crawl. The light seemed to dim, the forest to close in.
Nobody said anything. Stevens produced a small spy glass and swept the area. He muttered and tossed the glass to Bane. Bane looked around. He passed it to Ruark. Finally he swore and handed the glass back. Stevens in turn let Miller have a go. Stevens said, "I make out three more-there, there, and there." He was correct. Miller spotted the other trees scattered along the hillside. Each was huge and dead, and each bore the weird glyph.
"I seen that mark afore," Bane said in a reverential whisper.
"That book," Miller said and Bane grunted. Miller asked for Stevens' jug, hooked the handle with his pinky, mountain man fashion, and took a long, stout pull of the whiskey until black stars shot across his vision. Then he gasped for air and helped himself to another, healthier swig.
"Jaysus," Stevens said when he finally retrieved his hooch. He shook the jug with a sad, amazed expression as if not quite comprehending how this could've happened to his stock.
"I don't cotton to this 'tall," Horn said. He rubbed the goose egg on his forehead. He was flour-pale.
"I'm with the pup," Bane said. He spat. Ruark grunted agreement. He too spat a gob of Virginia Pride into the shrubbery.
Stevens crept up to the cedar and studied it intently, ran his fingers over the rough bark. He said, "Damn it
all! Boys, lookee here." As everyone clustered around he showed them how a great chunk of bark was separate from the tree. The slab of bark was as tall as three men, narrowing to a sharp peak. The outline, as of a door, was clear once they discerned it against the pattern. The bark door was hinged with sinew on one side.
"Whata ya reckon it is?" Horn said, backing away.
Watching Stevens trace the panel in search of a catch caused Miller's anxiety to sharpen. The light was fading and far too early in the afternoon. The sun's edge was being rapidly eaten by a black wave, creating a broken ring of fire and shadow. This phenomenon juxtaposed with the broken ring carved in the tree. Miller said, "Don't boys! Just leave it!"
Stevens muttered his satisfaction at locating the catch. Bane and Stevens pulled the wooden panel three quarters of the way open and then stopped, bodies rigid as stone. From his vantage Miller couldn't make out much of the hollow, gloomy interior, but the other two men stood with their necks craned and Bane moaned, low and aggrieved as a fellow who'd been stabbed in the gut. "Sweet Lord in heaven!" Stevens said.
Miller took several broad steps to join them at the portal. He gazed within and saw…
… Something squirmed and uncoiled, a darker piece of darkness, and resolved into…
… His vision clouded violently and he staggered, was steadied by Ruark while Bane and Stevens sealed the panel, ramming it closed with their shoulders. They spun, faces white, wearing expressions of fear that were terrible to behold in men of such stern mettle.
"Good gawd, lookit the sky," Horn said. The moon occulted the sun and the world became a shadowy realm where every surface glowed and bloomed with a queer bluish-white light. Every living thing in the forest held its breath.
"Jaysus Mother Mary!" Ruark said, breaking the spell. "Jaysus Mother Mary Christ Almighty!"
And the men scrambled, tripped and staggered, grasping at branches to keep their footing. The eclipse lasted four minutes at most. The group reached the bottom as the moon and the sun slid apart and the world brightened by degrees. The valley was narrow and ran crookedly north and south. There were falls to the north and a small, shallow river wound its way through sandbars and intermittent stands of cottonwood and fallen spars and uprooted trunks.
A rustic village lay one hundred seventy or so yards distant upon the opposite side of the valley behind a low palisade of vertical logs-a collection of antique cottages and bungalows that extended as far as the middle heights of the terraced hillside. Several figures moved among the buildings, tending to chickens, hanging clothes. Stevens passed the scope around and it was confirmed that a handful of women were the only visible inhabitants.
Miller had marched similar villages in the European countryside where the foundations might be centuries old, perhaps dated from Medieval times. To encounter such a place here in the wilds of North America was incomprehensible. This town was wrong, utterly wrong, and the valley one of the hidden places of the world. He'd never heard a whisper of the community and only God knew why people would dwell in secret. Perhaps they belonged to a religious sect that had fled persecution and wished to follow their faith in peace. He thought of the dreadful music from the previous night, the ominous drums, the blackening sun, and was not reassured.
Away from the central portion of the community loomed a stone tower with a crenellated parapet surmounted by a turret of shiny clay shingles that narrowed to a spike. The tower rose to a height of four stories, dominating the village and was constructed of bone-white stone notched at intervals by keyhole windows. The broken ring symbol had been painted in black ochre to the left of every window and upon the great ironbound oak doors at the tower's base. As with the symbol of the ring carved into the tree on the hillside, some combination of elements imbued the tower with menace that struck a chord deep inside Miller. His heart quickened and he looked over his shoulder at the way they'd come.
"Be dark soon," Stevens said. He also cast a furtive backward glance. Long shadows spread over the rushes and the open ground before them. The bloody sun hung a finger's breadth above the peaks and the sky was turning to rust. "These folks may be dangerous. Keep your guns ready."
Horn snatched at Bane's sleeve. "What'd y'all see back there?"
"Shut it, boy. Ain't gonna leave this valley goin' that direction. Nothin' more to tell."
"Yeah, shut it," Ruark said and gave the kid a shove to get him moving.
***
The company forded the river where it rushed shin deep, and moved to the village and passed through the open gate of the palisade after Stevens hailed the occupants. A dozen women of various ages paused in their chores and silently regarded the visitors. The women wore long, simple dresses of a distinctly Quaker style and dour bonnets and kerchiefs. They appeared well-fed and clean. Their teeth were white. Several of them immediately repaired to the central structure, a kind of longhouse. Most of the others went into the smaller houses. One of the younger girls smiled furtively at Miller. Obviously she was simple. Her dress was cut low and revealed her buxom curves, her belly swollen with child and Miller blushed and turned his head away. Chickens pecked in the weeds. A couple of goats wandered around, and a small pack of mutts approached, yipping and snaffling at the men's legs.
A brawny matron with gray hair stepped forward to greet the company, and she too offered a friendly smile. "Hello, strangers. Welcome." Her accent and mannerisms seemed off-kilter, indefinably foreign.
"Beggin' your pardon, Ma'am." Stevens doffed his hat, clutched it nervously. "Our apologies to intrude and all, but we're on the trail of a couple old boys who belong to our group. We're hopin' you might've seen 'em." His voice shook and he and Bane continued to cast worried glances over their shoulders. For his part, Miller had spent the past few minutes convincing himself he'd seen a coon or porcupine in the dead tree. Maybe a drowsing black bear.
To further distract and calm his galloping imagination, he studied the lay of the land. The houses were made of smoothed rocks and mortared stone and the windows were tiny and mostly without glass, protected from the elements by means of thick drapes and shutters. The dirt paths were grooved and hardened to iron with age. The hillside climbed steeply through trees and undergrowth, although its face was mostly rock. A cave mouth opened beneath an overhang. He'd thought perhaps some eccentric industrialist had possibly created a replica of a medieval town and transplanted its citizens, but the closer he inspected it, the more its atmosphere seeped into him, and he understood this was something far stranger.
The matron apparently observed the tension among the loggers. She said, "Dear gentlemen, ye have nothing to fear. Be at peace."
"We're not afraid, Missus," Miller said. He used a gruff tone because the woman unnerved and unsettled him with her odd accent, her antiquated primness, the manner in which she cocked her head like a living doll. How the whites of her eyes were overcome by black. "But we are in a powerful hurry."
"The men will soon return from the gathering and ye shall treat with them. Until then, please rest." The matron waved them toward some benches near the statue of a figure in robes, two children of equally indeterminate sex crouched at its feet. The statue was defaced by weather and green mold. One grotesquely elongated hand stretched forth as if to part a curtain to reveal some dark mystery. The children's necks were cruelly bent, tongues distended, spines humped and exposed as if flayed by a butcher's knife. The larger figure's dangling hand caressed their bowed heads. "Girls, see to fetching our guests pie and lemonade." The two younger women disappeared into the longhouse, as did the one who'd smiled at Miller. They moved with the ponderous grace of soon-to-be mothers.
Miller wondered if all of the girls were with child and wished he'd paid more attention. It seemed important. He said to the matron, "How did you come to build this village? It's not on any maps."
"Isn't it?" the woman said and for an instant her smile became sly as a predator of the wood. "Our hamlet is very old and was carried across the sea by our founders when Sir Raleigh
still served the Queen's pleasure. This is a place of worship, of communion and far, far from wicked civilizations of men. The nights are long in this valley. The days are gloomy. It is perfect."
Stevens wrung his hat and fidgeted. "If you don't mind, Ma'am, we need to locate our friends and be on our way before the sun goes down. Could you kindly point the way? Tracks show they come through here."
"You saw them, of course," Miller said. He decided what it was about the woman's speech that bothered him: Her voice was hoarse, the cadences unbalanced, her intonation stilted because she wasn't accustomed to speaking and hadn't been for a long time.
"Aye, she seen 'em alright," Bane said, mouth set in a grim line. "Prolly one o' you wenches that lured em' here."
The matron kept smiling. Her hands trembled. "Our husbands will be home anon. Mayhap they have seen your companions." She turned and walked into the longhouse. The door closed and then came the unmistakable clunk of a bar dropping.
Bane shook his head and spat. He broke apart his Rigby and checked the load and clacked the breech into place again.
"Well, this ain't good," Stevens said.
Horn said, "What we aimin' to do?" He moved to shuck his pack and Ruark frowned and told him to leave it be.
"Gonna find Cal and Ma. That's what. And leave your goddamned pack on. We have to make tracks in a hurry you wanna be all the way up shit crick with no paddle?" Stevens clapped his hat on. "Stick our noses in every last house. Kick in the doors if we have to. Let's make it quick. Daylight is burnin'."
Miller and Bane teamed to search the cottages on the south side; Stevens, Horn, and Ruark took the north. It went fast. Miller took the lead, busting through the doors and making a brief sweep of the interiors. The women inside calmly waited, speaking not a word to the trespassers-and indeed, many were pregnant. Each house was small and dim, but there weren't many places to hide. Most were neat and well-ordered, not untoward in any obvious way. Simple furnishings, albeit archaic. Oil lamps and candles, fireplaces that doubled as ovens. A paltry selection of books on rude shelves. This last detail struck him as truly odd.